


All The Patriots' Men

by Thene



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Bisexuality, Conspiracy Theories, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, London, Masochism, Multi, Polyamory, Sadism, Watergate, slash fics which are also het fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:13:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thene/pseuds/Thene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's January 1973 and Frank Jaeger is bringing down the Nixon Administration, with a little help from his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote this I hadn't written anything much in a long while, so I don't think much of some of the prose, or of the ending - it was meant to lead into another fic which I have yet to write. I am posting it anyway because of my hope that MGS:PW will confirm that Gray Fox bringing down Nixon is canon, and if this happens I intend to brag about knowing all along. *crosses fingers*
> 
> This fic has kink, Patriots, evil plotting, both slash and het, much BB &amp; Fox filial bonding, and spoilers for MGS4.

_"Very close, yes. The war has outlived its usefulness, even to the President. We can expect the announcement later this month."_

"What about China?"

"Eva's team have plundered the last of the resources the Philosophers left there. They won't be a threat to us again, and now Vietnam is no longer a threat to them_, I doubt they will be of concern to us for the foreseeable future."_

"Don't underestimate them, Ocelot."

"I am not. Everything's going well at your end, hmm, Snake?"

"Yes. We're ready to move against Number Two as soon as Zero gives the word. Might even have the tougher half of the job wrapped up by the end of the year."

"Really? I shall have to visit yourself and Gray Fox once this is over. To celebrate. To talk of our glorious future."

"I'll look forward to it."

"Happy new year, my friend."

"Happy new year."

*

 

So much for keeping his distance.

Jack sat by the telephone, thinking. It wasn't that he didn't miss Adamska. He did. It was that he didn't _trust_ him - which was ridiculous, considering how much faith this had all taken, all these plots and conspiracies, all the activities they'd planned that could easily end with Nixon having all of them shot. He and Adamska were fellow Patriots, part of a team like no other. A team that would soon have control over all the world.

He and Frank Jaeger were part of something else. He didn't know what. Something that schemed together, day in, day out, at the top of an apartment building in DC. Something that was striving to reassemble a life as they worked, trying to thread memories together.

As much as he wanted to see Adamska again - craved it, almost, yearned for more than just nightly phone calls - he hadn't the trust to see him as part of this. Adamska was too good at using people, and Frank was too good at being used. Jack wanted to give _all_ his recruits a place to fight without being consumed by war, without being just cannon fodder for some lousy government.

And, in spite of everything, in spite of the hours they'd spent talking about her - he thought Adamska wasn't truly committed to that ideal.

It was hard to think of Frankie as vulnerable; the boy was tough as nails, had survived wounds that would kill most men, and he approached fighting with the right attitude - an honesty and realism that had taken Jack ten years and three small wars to learn. Frank was his strongest agent - the one he'd codenamed Gray Fox.

Frank's problems were all inside his soul.

They'd tried therapists - doctors who'd promised they could fix the holes in Frank's memories, and get him to live at peace with himself. They would invariably phone Jack after the first few sessions, concerned that his foster son was obsessed with violence and peculiarly attached to a fantasy about being locked in a vat for three years. Idiots and naïve fucking fools. He'd considered trying priests, but decided that would be as likely to do Frank harm as good. Instead he'd decided to quit trusting Frank's health to self-important strangers. He of all people knew that a friendship with a mentor touched you in ways no god or whitecoat could ever fathom.

So he'd resolved to teach Frank everything he could. Of course, there were a lot of things he _couldn't_ teach; he hired tutors to flesh out Frank's patchy education, and he drafted in Roy Campbell and a few other experienced soldiers to show Frank (and some other very young recruits) the parts of soldiering that he'd always been bad at. (Including things like discipline, and dealing with other people).

They always spent the afternoon together, sharing lunch and then driving over to their training gym. They worked on CQC, stealth skills, shooting - and they talked all the while. Not just about soldiering, but about life.

Jack told him everything about his own time in Mozambique, and other parts of Africa he'd been through in the 1960s, hoping to help Frank's memories find their way home. They shared every detail they could recall of their first meeting; he was amused to learn that Frankie'd been afraid of him, because he had only one eye, and thought he might want to take one of Frank's to replace it. Jack tried to recollect what he'd known of the child then, how old he'd thought he was, what he'd looked like. He'd been nine, perhaps? He'd had much darker skin before his years in the culture tank, but his hair, even full of dirt and blood, had been the same white-blond it was now. (Try as he might, he couldn't recall the colour of the child's eyes). He also hadn't spoken English, so they supposed that Gene's scientists had made him learn to speak and write the tongue in order to direct him more easily. In addition to English, Frank knew a little German and Portuguese and - inexplicably - spoke Vietnamese with perfect fluency, as if it were his mother tongue.

He'd mentioned this mysterious aptitude to Dr Clark and she'd proposed a genetic analysis, but he was still wary of her obsession with getting hold of Frank's genome. Frank had had quite enough of being someone's test subject.

Elisa had said that she thought he'd be a good father. He'd told her he could have no children, brushed her precognition off as bullshit - and now here he was playing mentor to a boy who had no one else in the world. Was this what she meant? A child who'd bring the world to ruin, or save it?

_She spoke nonsense_, he told himself. _It doesn't mean a goddamn thing._

*

 

_"It's not going to be hard,"_ Frank had said a week previously. _"There's so much dirt in this fucking town, it's just a matter of pinning the wrong bit to the right person and then waiting til someone finds out." _

Jack was almost jealous of him. A childhood spent on battlefields had rendered Frank devoid of innocence and impervious to disillusionment. It had _hurt_ when Jack had realised the country he'd been brought up to believe in was a hollow mannequin pushed about by the Philosophers; that everyone who had power abused it; and that elected presidents were just men like any others and could be brought down with the same crude tools.

Removing the President and having their tame puppet take his place would advance the Patriots' cause, for sure. But at the back of his mind, Jack kept wondering; _would she have done it? Would she call this 'loyalty'?_

Too late for that now. Spiro Agnew - Number Two, as Jack had come to think of him - already had his head on the block, ripe to be felled by overzealous prosecutors who'd eagerly taken the Patriots' bait. It was harder to goad the lawyers into taking on Nixon...but Frank had, largely on his own initiative, decided to go beyond _waiting til someone finds out_.

Jack got up from his 'desk' - a few cushions beside the low coffee table in the lounge, his notes, kettle, telephone and cigars kept on top of it; guns and explosives underneath. He poured two more cups of coffee and padded down the hallway to their apartment's _real_ office. He tapped lightly on the open door before entering.

Frank was sat back in a chair with his feet on his desk, grinning. He pulled his headset down around his neck, and waved Jack into a spare chair - almost like _he_ were the boss.

The room had little in the way of possessions or decoration, but seemed to contain every toy Sigint had ever designed. The desk was an arsenal of receivers and scramblers, and Jack didn't care to speculate where all the wires led, or what they were spying on. A huge web had developed around their main project - destroying President Nixon - and Frank was probably recording half the phone calls in DC by now. His bookshelves were filled with meticulously labelled audio reels; there were more piled up under the desk.

Jack sometimes feared the boy saw this room as another laborotary. A place to experiment, and to sleep. His machete - the only thing Frankie saw as truly belonging to him - was propped by the head of his bed, like a macabre teddy bear.

"Listening to something fun?" he asked, as if he'd found the boy dancing to the radio, not plotting to overthrow the government.

"Editing, actually. I've spliced up something to link Nixon to that break-in at the Watergate complex last year."

Jack nodded. He still wasn't sure why Adamska had set up the break-in in the first place, but if they could make use of it, so much the better. "I want to hear that tape later."

"It's perfect."

"Really?"

"It is _now_. I was playing around with the originals a bit first..." Jack narrowed his eye. "Had to erase a few parts here and there - but that might even make it look _worse_ for the Whitehouse if anyone gets hold of them."

Slapdash, maybe, but he knew Frank always corrected mistakes that needed correction. "So how are you going to use all of this, anyway? I thought the lawyers didn't want to go there."

Frank shook his head. "Spineless. But I've got it sorted. Been feeding it to some journalists."

Jack blinked. "Journalists?" Frank was a talented agent, but he feared the boy would bite off more than he could chew. "I hope you have a fall guy ready for all this..." Frank frowned. "Just in case, you know? It's always worth being cautious."

"Oh, I have a fall guy - Felt. And he knows I have enough dirt on him that he'd do better to take the rap for this than cross me."

"The FBI's associate director?" Fuck, he was thorough. And he aimed higher than high. "What codename are you using for all this, anyway?"

Frank studied a spot on the wall just above Jack's head. "Err...Deepthroat."

Jack sighed into his hands. So this is why other covert intelligence groups didn't use sixteen-year-old secret agents. He knew where to lay the blame, too - Tanya had begged to show Frank 'the sights' when they'd made contact with her in New York, and he should've figured some of those sights would be on 42nd Street.

A few teen kicks were forgiveable, especially after spending three years living in a vat. What was more frightening was seeing how much Frankie was _enjoying_ bringing down the president. The spy bug had bit him hard, and Jack knew that it wasn't going to let him go.

How far can you go, before you snap? Before you do something that you'll regret for the rest of your life? Before war swallows you whole? _Before I assign you to a task that breaks your heart in two, and you do it anyway? You've never had anything to lose, Frank, but that doesn't mean you never could or never will._

He pushed Frank's coffeecup across the desk, and got up. "Take care," he said. Frank nodded. "And Frank, take your goddamn time. I want to aim for the middle of next year, no earlier. There'll be a lot of fallout and we need a plan for every last loose end."

"Right... I was starting to worry about that."

"Huh?" Forethought from Frank was no bad thing.

"The future. When this is done, we'll have a President who's loyal as a dog but dumb as a toad. What if Number Three - if Ford - can't govern convincingly, or win an election? Who do we use then?"

_We're using_ you_, kid_, he thought. But Frankie needed to work that out for himself. "Sigint's working on a scheme to control the recording of election results in the USA. It won't be done by the end of this cycle, but Zero says we'll have full control by 1980." Frank nodded, satisfied.

*


	2. Chapter 2

It had started with a phone call. He'd been staying in a safehouse on Hawaii, getting over a few wounds and catching up on news. Since Zero had been released from arrest, they'd been working together to win asylum - or at least some damn good fake identities - for his Red Army recruits. The higherups seemed unwilling to integrate them into existing military intelligence, and Zero was talking about using them as an entirely new unit, but Jack was annoyed at the stuck-up egos and the intransigence involved and was sorely missing just being in South America with his own personal army and no goddamn suits to answer to. The suicide of the CIA chief had sent the intel world into uproar, and Jack was frustrated to be so far from Langley, but figured he needed to be right where he was, near his men. It wasn't like stalking around HQ glowering at people from behind his eyepatch would accomplish much.

He picked the phone up on the first ring, assuming it would be Zero again. "This is Snake."

"John. Who do you trust?"

_What?_

There were a lot of things he could've said. Starting with _"Where the hell have you been?"_ or _"How did you get this number?"_ or _"Come right here right now and get into bed with me."_ After a few seconds thought, he said, "Myself." And waited to see if Adamska would hang up.

"Is that all?"

"It's all I need."

"Well, who would you _like_ to trust?"

He sighed. "Zero. Clark. Anderson. Tanya. You."

"That's more or less as I thought." Adamska hung up.

A week later, he received a letter - unstamped, unaddressed, unsigned - requesting that he come to a certain railway station in London at noon on July 20th, in order to _'receive a proposition'_. It was the 18th. He called Zero and asked for a charter flight to Europe, and was mildly surprised when the major didn't even ask why.

 

*

When he reached their appointed meeting-place he walked on past the entrance, as if he were going somewhere else entirely. He turned into the next street and continued for another quarter of a mile, until he found an alley that backed on to the railway tracks. It ended in a mesh fence topped with barbed wire, but there was a shallow fox-run in the dirt underneath. No reason to assume there'd be an electric current. He slid through the hole on his belly, then headed back towards the station with a careful crouching run, making use of whatever cover he could find.

He pulled a folding telescope from his pocket, and scanned every platform that he could see from this position. It didn't take long to spot Adamska, looking incongruous in civillian clothes - he wore jeans with a slight flare that was probably hiding his spurs, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. No hat. He'd grown his hair - it was now long enough to tuck behind the ears. He stood perhaps halfway up the furthest-right platform (depth perception wasn't Jack's strong point), pacing about a little, both hands tucked into his pockets.

Jack waited behind a shrub until a train pulled out, and as soon the engine came close enough, he ran to the station, vaulted up onto the edge of the concrete platform, and kept going til he was roughly level with Adamska laterally.

He had no hope of finding a moment when there were no people around. But among a crowd of so many, no one would notice the one, however strange his actions. He shinned up a wall support until he reached a girder that spanned the width of the huge hangar-like roof. He swung himself onto it; it was a twelve-inch-wide casting of iron, and was punctuated every few yards with a vertical support. It wouldn't be hard to crawl along to where Adamska stood without being noticed, but he'd have to be careful negotiating those supports.

He made his way a few inches at a time, raising to a crouch when he reached each of the verticals and hugging them as he stepped past. Adamska kept pacing about the same small area, occasionally checking the time on a pocket-watch, or scanning the crowd by the station's entrance. He wasn't visibly armed, but then, Jack wasn't visibly armed either.

He slid a cigar out of the case in his pocket, and held it like a knife, still lying flat against the girder. When he saw the tip of Adamska's shadow pass below him, he dropped to the ground like a hawk.

He landed on his feet with Adamska's collar in his grip, cigar held to the neck. "Freeze -!"

Adamska had already turned on one spur, burying mock-gunbarrel fingers in the flesh beneath Jack's chin. "Bang -!"

They remained completely still for fifteen seconds. Jack had been counting. It was Adamska who broke the silence.

"Who are the Patriots?"

"_La-li-lu-le-lo_. When did you spot me?"

"Twenty minutes ago. I paid a rose-seller to follow you from the Euston Road and come tell me once he'd seen you approach the building."

"What, you didn't buy me roses?"

"You'd only try to eat them."

Jack counted to five, and then fell to the platform, laughing.

 

*

Adamska had a room in the Russian embassy. Jack entered every evening by slipping through the hedge and climbing a birch tree close to the front wall, then dropping to Adamska's window from the roof. The blond told him this was quite unneccessary and he was welcome to use the front door, but Jack wouldn't hear of it. After the first night he suspected the guards had been told to ignore him, but he pretended otherwise because that would've been no fun at all. His lover had muttered that when he left the city, he'd be making a few suggestions to Security on the way out; Jack told him not to even bother.

He was sure there was some secret awaiting him here, some method to Adamska's madness, but for the next few days, Adamska determinedly forced him into doing something he hadn't done for over ten years: enjoy himself. They stole priceless gifts for each other from the British Museum; had sex at 3am on the bank of the Serpentine Lake. The best part was the other man's company - his agile mind, his delightful cruelty. His eyes, that blue of time long past.

He became used to the man's regular ambushes - the playtackles, and not-so-playful ones. He was going easy at first, wary of Jack's recent injuries, but Jack wouldn't hear of that either. He enjoyed being always on edge, and all the better if the punishment for failure was pleasure.

Attempts to bring him down on the street, or leave him high and dry while they explored forbidden places together, no longer phased him. He was always ready for the shoves and the pounces, and returned them twice as hard. The last time he was truly caught napping was at night the next Friday; he opened Adamska's window, confident that that room was their sanctuary, and heard the _click_ behind his ear as soon as he stepped off the sill.

He'd no doubt the gun was loaded. It wouldn't've been _fun_ otherwise. If he was very lucky, it'd just be another blank.

He heard the other man place the gun on the nightstand - probably with the safety still off - and felt hands wrap about his throat. Adamska turned him about and pushed him up against the wall, one hand stroking his neck, the other running down his torso. Jack could easily have thrown him to the floor, but he stayed where he'd been put; he liked to indulge his lover, and it always ended with his lover indulging _him_. Adamska was playing with his belt with one rough hand, opening buckles -

When Jack realised Adamska was after for his knife, he was already a half-second too late.

He swung his right elbow upwards, breaking the grip Adamska had on his throat. His knee flew up, and hit nothing - Adamksa was gone, out of reach- then he grunted in pain as the man's spur thudded into his thigh.

Jack froze. Adamska had stepped to his left, just barely within kicking distance. Jack grabbed the boot that was still resting above his leg, and twisted it. He took a kick to the face for his trouble. The blond raised his heel again, and slammed it into Jack's other leg, just above his knee.

He sank towards the floor, teeth pressed together against the pain.

So Adamska had the knife. And his spurs. And all his usual sadistic intentions. The blond grabbed Jack by the throat again, pushed his head back to the wall, and slid the knife beneath the ribbon of his eyepatch.

The blade twisted, and Jack felt the black band fall away. Felt a thin trickle of blood run down his useless eye socket. "Hmm," the blond murmured smugly, and the flat of the knife stroked Jack's face and neck.

He unbuttoned his shirt, because he'd only packed three and he wasn't that good at sewing and he knew Adamksa far too well. Trousers, too, already ripped in two places, blood oozing down to his knees.

His lover leaned over him, pushing one boot against Jack's cock, rubbing it down from the pointed toe and then up to the turning spur. His left hand touched a half-healed bullet wound on Jack's shoulder; fascinated, Jack thought, with that vicious penetration he could not duplicate.

They kissed, hard, and Jack unfastened Adamska's flies, gripping his hard cock with sweat-slick fingers. He felt the knife behind his ear, and wondered for a moment just how crazy the sadist was - but he felt it move backwards, slicing off a lock of his hair.

Adamska pulled away, holding the severed dark strands against the knife-hilt. He placed both hands on the wall above Jack's head. What was that, some deranged sense of romance? He knew, though he could not see, that the smile was spreading across Adamska's face. The lust for sex and blood. The joy he took in his cruel way of fucking.

"John, I know what kind of man you really are."

He would've given that a foul retort, but his mouth was busy.

 

*

He had almost forgotten the _'proposition'_, or at least decided it was just a double entendre. But early on Sunday morning, Adamska produced two sheets of paper; the first was a letter written in Russian, most of it in codewords that Jack didn't comprehend - the first line simply said; _"Meet us at the opera tonight at 8am."_ Of the rest, he could discern only one more string of letters; _'la-li-lu-le-lo'_. This nonsense was signed with a familiar empty circle, _O_.

The second page was blank. Adamska wrote _'OUT OF ORDER'_ on it, folded it and put it in his pocket, and then they walked on foot to Covent Garden Station.

He looked at the assembly of people in the tiny hall - two in the ticket queue, one kindly holding the elevator, and on scanning the room for the fourth who he _knew_ would be with them, he realised she was hidden behind the third, crouching in the corner of the lift. He bit his tongue, and said not a word as his lover bought tickets for them both. They followed the others into the lift, and Ocelot - suddenly he was Ocelot again, all schemes and alertness - gummed his makeshift sign to the door as it was closing.

He met their eyes one by one; Zero, leaning on a cane, who stared at him warmly and thoughtfully; Sigint with a merry grin, fashionably dressed as ever; Tanya taking a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, looking rosy in the summer heat. Dr Clark was still kneeling by the panel, working at its innards with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. The elevator juddered to a halt, and she sat back on her heels and smiled at him.

"Who are the Patriots?" he asked no one in particular.

Zero looked to Sigint, who shook his head. "No signals here, Major. No one's listening."

"Thank you." He took a deep breath. "Snake - you're the Patriots. I am. We all are. And between the six of us, we can make sure it never happens again..."

And so in the bowels of the world's old capital they began to build a new one - not a city, but a nexus of ideals, power, technology, skills, and people. Especially people. Even as they bickered over the groundwork, he held to Zero's words. If it meant knowing that he would never again have to put a gun to the head of everything he loved and pull the trigger, then he would be part of this.

 

*

Their first objective, the major had solemnly said, was to eliminate the Nixon administration. Not because it was bad, or even because it was good, but because it was developing into a power-base to rival their own; "Nixon hasn't got our skills or our financial security, but he's got fingers in a lot of pies and people do what he wants because they respect his status as president. So we need to get him out of the way, and we need to install a president of our own."

A pause, then Snake and Ocelot simultaneously said: "You want me to kill him?"

Zero shook his head. "No. But he must be brought down, at the ballot-box or...some other way."

"We are _not_ letting the Democrats take over again. I didn't shoot Bobby Kennedy for nothing," Ocelot groused.

Some other way, then. "Time to use the signals. Hunt for some good honest dirt and spread it around," added Sigint.

Jack met his eyes and thought of the frank hunter.

*


	3. Chapter 3

He spent more time with all of them in the days afterwards, but they never talked about their new alliance and its many-layered plans; it seemed unsafe to speak of it out in the daylit world. Not just because the wrong ears might hear, but because it felt like a _dream_, something so fragile that it might shatter if you dropped a heavy word on it.

The truth would sink in soon enough, he figured; _yes, we can do this_. They had the damned Legacy that his mentor had walked to her death for, that Tanya had betrayed him for. They had his loyal army of recruited followers. They had the Philosophers' old covert network, the chain of secrets that had originally brought Adamska and the Major into contact. And they had the plans for Metal Gear RAXA and some of the other weapons Granin and Sokolov had developed.

They had the right people.

Zero summoned him for lunch at his gentlemen's club, and they ended up staying there til midnight, talking and playing canasta. He had a lot of questions about San Hieronymo, and especially about the men he'd recruited there. Jack's leadership abilities seemed to impress him. "You're a real icon to them, Jack. Especially once they've all been granted asylum in the USA, I would think they'd loyally follow you into any war you chose."

"I won't ask them to fight if they don't want to. Maybe some of them would sooner get on with their new lives instead." Zero just smiled at him, as if he thought him very naïve. "Besides, I'm not sure going to war would be the best way to achieve our current goals." _Our_ goals. Huh.

"Quite. I think Vietnam is enough of a war to be getting on with, for now."

"Have you been out there?" Zero shook his head. "It's quicksand, Major. I'm not going back, I'm not sending my men out there and I don't know why Nixon's still letting it go on."

Zero just smiled again. "So what do you think our next move should be?"

"One mission objective at a time. We need to start casing out our target, and that means setting up operations in Washington DC. If Anderson can provide the technology, my recruits and I can deal with the infiltration aspects. I might need Clark's political contacts, too -"

"Dr Clark and I are working on another project currently. One I'll speak to you about in good time." Jack bristled a little at that. So much for this meaning the end of need-to-know basis. "Anderson has some contacts of his own, anyway. Have you heard of Jim Houseman...?"

They continued to circle about their prey without referring to him directly, without mentioning his name. A while later, Zero leaned back in his armchair, a glass of brandy swirling in his hand. "Do you still think about her, Jack?"

"Yes." Every day. Every goddamn night before he fell asleep.

"Aye. Politicians can't command that level of devotion, can they? Churchill, Roosevelt - I've already forgotten every word they ever said to me. They were mere _humans_. She was..."

"She was the joy, Major. She was the meaning of fighting...and of living."

The elder man nodded. "Jack...for this to work, we need to bring that meaning back to life. This age needs an icon of war every bit as much as the 1940s and 50s did. I think San Hieronymo showed you that."

Jack was silent for a moment. "I'm not her."

"No, but Jack, if you could only _believe_ in yourself to the degree you believe in her..."

 

*

The next afternoon, he and Adamska went to the movies with Dr Clark. She complained that all the films showing had been released in America months ago, but decided to take them to one she'd particularly liked. A sci-fi flick about scientists and microbes and outer space. Better than being subjected to another western. She shared popcorn with Adamska - Jack had no taste for it - and kept whispering about the novelty of moviegoing in this city. The plush red seats and the silence. Adamska just rolled his eyes and set his two pointed fingers to her lips, urging her to shut up. For all her love of the other and her urge to explore the limits of reality, she seemed markedly less well-travelled than the rest of the group. She wasn't even interested in environments any more, but was pursuing genome research with great fervour.

Over dinner, Clark was keen to hear about the Perfect Soldier experiment, and what it had been like to fight its product. She said it was like something in a Japanese movie she'd seen. A _ninja_, whatever that was. She eagerly talked about studying him - testing his reflexes and examining his genome. He glossed over the child's whereabouts, claiming he'd left the matter in the hands of one of his recruits, because he didn't like the way she talked as if Null were a _thing_.

She was so cold these days - it was like the things that excited her in the real world were no different to her than the films she watched. Like she'd escaped from reality entirely. Were they all just movie characters to her, with she being just an impersonal audience to them? There was so little to latch on to about _her_ \- she still hadn't even told him her first name, and he had given up asking. (He figured it was something really embarrassing).

Adamska seemed to understand her much better than Jack. He listened to the two of them arguing about their favourite movies, and wondered if they perhaps were just more similar to each other than he was to either of them. They might disagree with that, though.

"I don't understand. Why do you like those films so much? It's not even real science."

"A lot of the things we think are just pretend science could be real science one day. That's the great thing about medicine - we've just got to keep experimenting until we know for sure."

"So you think we should keep experimenting until space-diseases start wiping out entire towns?" the blond sneered.

She laughed. "Sure, if that means we end up living in a different world."

Jack looked up from his cigar at that. "Not all change is good change, Doctor."

"It is in science. You can't put the genies back in their bottles, but you can make sure they're on your side." She lowered her voice. "That's what all this is about. To me."

A lot of that had happened lately. Without daring to mention the Patriots aloud, they'd talk about their aims and the things they wanted to bring inside this new circle. It was at the centre of every conversation he had all week, and it had no name. Just _'this'_, _'us'_, _'now'_. It was like a secret safehouse all their minds were inhabiting, and the radio was always tuned to _la-li-lu-le-lo_. And they all had different reasons for being there - if she'd come to make the future happen, then so be it. Hadn't they all?

When they parted, she shook each of their hands in turn, thanking them for the dinner date. For a moment Jack swore he saw something pass between Adamska's hand and hers, but he dismissed the notion. He was just being hyper-alert, thinking up a conspiracy to lurk underneath every stone. Clark had saved his life with her advice on many occasions. He should not distrust her at this moment when the greatest of trust was required.

And yet he did.

 

*

He caught up with Tanya in a dive in Soho. She was mysteriously sober even though the whole bar seemed to be buying her drinks; perhaps that was another ability the Philosophers had bred into their spies. He'd've asked, but she never answered questions about the past. She was extravagantly glad to see him, exclaiming that it had been so _long_, and he looked so _tired_, and didn't he need a _good time_ with her? She bought him a whiskey, probably the first thing she'd paid for all week, and took him out to the dancefloor, earning him jealous stares.

He did his best to follow her, but this just wasn't something he knew how to do. He'd been so much more comfortable on the bike with her. "Your heart's not in this," she said, after a few attempts at dances. She gave him a sultry smile and leaned her body close to his. He took a moment to run his hands over her, but then pushed her away.

"This isn't us," he said. Not dancing. Not playing at being young sweethearts in the city. "You don't seem real without your motorbike..."

She nodded. "Until I fall dead, or fall in love." Suddenly she seemed like Eva again, just as Adamska was becoming more and more Ocelot - she was blurring away from Tanya and her short skirts and lipstick, and becoming the girl with a Mauser on her hip and the wind in her hair. "She's not far away, you know? Want to take a ride with me?"

"Maybe in the morning," he replied.

She led him to an apartment a little deeper into Soho, at the top of a tall terrace with a stairwell full of whores; she wiggled her hips as the climbed up the stairs, and he was sure the rest of the inhabitants all assumed she was just another working girl. Inside, he found the bathroom full of makeup, the kitchen full of noodles and sagging bookshelves full of tomes in English, Russian and Chinese; she'd clearly been living here for some time.

He had no idea where Adamska resided when they weren't together, or where Zero lived at all. He'd considered stalking the man home after their parting a few nights previously, but had decided that might be a very bad idea. He knew where Clark and Anderson had their labs, but he had never seen their homes, or even really wondered if they _had_ any.

Eva must trust him. Maybe he could trust her.

They talked for a while - _not_ about the Patriots, but about her this, her now, her home. How she'd let her trail die in Hanoi, hoping to god that her Chinese former masters would give up on her for good; how she'd gone to Europe on her bike, overland for five and a half thousand miles and loving every terrifying inch of it. "It was easy to get lost in Europe. I could just put on something new whenever I felt like it - a new skirt, a new name, a new nationality... Once I reached London, it was as easy as turning down a new street. Everyone's lost here."

She leaned his head on his shoulder. "Why did you go to South America?" he asked. "Why did you want to get involved all over again?"

"Because I missed you," she replied simply, and closed her eyes.

_Because I trust her?_, he thought, but he was steeling himself for betrayal before she'd even finished getting undressed. Maybe it was just because he _didn't_ trust Ocelot. Or maybe because he could look into her eyes without thinking about standing amid white flowers and pulling that trigger.

They tumbled into bed still stinking of beer and cigarette smoke. It felt so ugly, fucking her in this tiny attic where he couldn't shut the city out of his senses - couldn't ignore the yells and sirens that flitted through the fragile window, or the dim glow of sodium lights, or the smell of smoke and rain. _Because it's for real._ This wasn't From China, With Love - a whore on a fur rug, bought and paid for by a foreign power. She was kissing him desperately, burying her face in his shoulder. This was Snake and Eva - or Jack and Tanya - or both of those things at once.

 

*

"Thanks, Jack," she murmured afterwards. "It wouldn't seem real without this. Wouldn't be right..." What? The evening together? The Patriots? He didn't know.

He was almost surprised when he awoke the next morning and found her still lying beside him. After a breakfast of toast and green tea, she led him to the place she kept her bike - one of a row of little garages underneath Park Lane. Her stash was protected by the best padlock he'd ever seen.

What does she do when she falls out of love? Get back on the bike again?

*

 

"You smell of gasoline," said Adamska, twitching his nose like a cat. "And the sea."

Jack closed the window. "Yeah. Eva took us off to the coast for the day." Adamska didn't respond. He was leaning on the wall by the window; if he'd planned any mischief that evening, he had clearly abandoned the idea. His arms were folded, and one spur spun up and down the wall, doubtless gouging a rut in the plaster - but what with all the little bloodstains on the the carpet, and the two pieces of furniture they'd broken, Jack could have forgiven Adamska for not fussing too much about that.

He tried offering an outstretched hand, but the blond pushed past him, spurs clicking as he walked. "You know I need to go soon. I have to lavish some attention on Brezhnev."

Russia's new leader? "That's part of Zero's plan?"

"My own. I know how easily the man's mind could turn to war, and without our direction, I think the 1970s could be a very short decade."

"And there's no point in taking control of the world if there isn't one. I get it." He thought on it for a moment. "She saw a world without east or west..."

Adamska smirked a little. "My hands round Brezhnev's neck, your knife in Nixon's back. Our world."

"And that's her world?"

He paused. "We are Patriots, John. Fellow countrymen. Children of..." he raised an eyebrow "...the same home." He sat on the corner of the bed. "I had hoped that would mean we all had faith in each other."

Jack tried to fathom what this was about. He was fairly sure that Adamska did not know the meaning of fidelity - but the man continually proved to be more complicated than he appeared. He knew his lover didn't give a damn who Jack slept with -

_It's not my faith he's questioning_, he realised. _It's his own. Did he think I wouldn't come back? Did he..._

"Adamska," he said. The blond didn't look around. "That faith is going to begin here, and it won't fade. You don't think it'll be easier to hold on now we're all working together, instead of acting at cross purposes for governments that could tell us to kill each other at any time?"

"No," he replied, and stretched out on the bed. "It just means there's no one else to blame for our troubles any more. Anything that goes wrong from here on is our fault, and our responsibility."

"No more quarrels or accidents, then." He touched the ribbon that held his patch - knotted at the brow, because he hadn't yet bothered to fix it. "I only have one eye left, you know."

At that, Adamska turned away and curled up on his side. "That was faith, John. You let me take your eye instead of that woman's life. That counts for something."

"I let you take my eye and then I kept coming back to you. That counts for something too."

Adamska didn't say anything, or even move. Jack sat beside him on the bed, and put a hand to the other man's face.

He felt tears.

"An eye for an eye?" he asked. Adamska just grabbed his hand and held it, nails biting into Jack's flesh. Jack pulled him up into his arms to kiss him.

"John." Adamska's voice trembled. "I've made a mistake," he whispered. "I - she said it was a start, but not enough. She needs more and I don't know what she'll do to get it. I don't know what she'll do -" _What?_ "You - you have no idea." Adamska was hyperventilating.

Jack shook his shoulders gently. "What's the hell's wrong with you?"

"You'll end up like the Boss did. Betrayed to death. For the same reason - because we love you too much. That's our mistake, our betrayal. John, I love you - too much."

For a moment, Jack felt that the earth had stopped turning. He wanted to kiss Adamska, to say something that would make sense of this, but he couldn't even move.

And his love placed a finger on his lips. "Don't you say a goddamn word about how you feel. I'm better off not knowing."

 

*

"So how's Frank doing?" asked Sigint.

Jack froze, but knew before he turned around that there would be nobody in sight. Sigint _always_ knew who was listening. The man was professionally paranoid, enough to make Zero seem reckless by comparison, and Jack was familiar with his preference for meeting his friends in unmonitorable places; in this case, the middle of a park. It was early morning, and no one else was around.

"I don't know," he replied. "He needs more time to heal. I left him in a military hospital in Hawaii." The hospital where Jack had been _born_. "He's being looked after by some of the doctors I met in San Hieronymo. They feel bad about keeping him in the culture tank on Gene's say-so, and want to do something for him now. I'd been visiting every day until I came here." Frank was understandably wary of them, and Jack wanted to return to his side soon. He couldn't turn his back on the boy for a second time. "Could you, uh, not tell the others? They all want to know about Null, but... I don't think Frank Jaeger's ready for that."

For all his brash attitude, Donald was ten times as understanding as any of the rest of them. "Sure. You're worried about him?"

He shrugged. "A little. I want him to recover because I think he'll make a great soldier, even if he's no longer a perfect one."

Donald nodded, sarcastically. "Always about the mission, huh?"

Jack sighed. "It's _my_ fault Gene got hold of him in the first place. I should've checked out that rehab facility instead of blindly trusting them. I should've asked Clark or you to look into -" He broke off. He was babbling. Anderson didn't need to hear that. It wasn't just about his _guilt_, damnit. Frankie needed him. To watch over him. He'd _said_. "How did you know I was worried, anyway? I didn't say anyth-"

"_Because_ you didn't say anything, Jack."

Oh.

"I...I'm sorry. I should've thanked you, at least."

"Least I could do." Sigint had supplied him with a fake birth record and passport, claiming Frank as the son of two FOX unit scientists who Gene had killed. That identity had got Frank into the USA and into a hospital. He owed the man for that. "So why will he make a great soldier?"

"Because he's never known anything but war."

Donald blinked. "What, don't you think he needs a break now?"

"He does. But he'll go back to the battlefield soon enough. It's all he knows." He stared at his hands. "Trust me, Donald. It's all I know. And I won't be free of it til I'm dead."

They were quiet together for a minute. Jack watched the flight of geese overhead. Thought about how easy it would be to shoot them out of the sky. "Damn," said Anderson eventually. "You really think the kid doesn't have a hope?"

He sighed. "Would you do something for me?" The other man tilted his head. "Come meet me in the States in a few months. Maybe if you teach Frank about signal intelligence, he'll want to be a tech spy instead of a field soldier. Maybe."

Donald nodded. "Sure. Maybe."

*


	4. Chapter 4

Frank didn't join him for breakfast. Jack hoped he was enjoying a rare lie-in; for weeks the boy had been up until the small hours poring over tapes, and this was the first time he'd been tardy for their 0700 meal. By 1000 he stopped kidding himself; Frankie _hated_ sleep and he knew it. (_"Part alive and part dead,"_ he'd once said. Jack had thought of The Sorrow's river, where he was still sometimes wading in his nightmares, and replied: _"You aren't kidding."_)

He wasn't worried. It would be a sorry mugger that tried to jump Frank, even unarmed. Deprived of artificially perfect senses, Frank had turned to diligent training instead - making up for lost speed with increased skill. He couldn't stop bullets with a knife any more, but he'd got damn good at CQC.

He'd spent the morning making phone calls to Campbell and a few other FOXHOUND operatives, and looking over recon photos of an old Philosophers' base in the Caucasus, drawing up infiltration plans. It was the kind of work that made him feel dead - just a pulse fluttering with the anticipation of leading this next mission, looking for a reason to come alive again. He was done by 1300. Frank still wasn't there. Jack drove across the city as he did every day, to the old FOX resupply safehouse which he'd set up as a training area for FOXHOUND. It was in a neighbourhood where no one complained about the muffled sound of gunfire. Frank wasn't there either, so he worked out alone.

He returned at 1700, and considered phoning Adamska. It would be past midnight in Moscow, but he had never yet complained when Jack roused him from his sleep. He could ask him to make that visit - not to celebrate. Just to be together, and maybe figure out what the hell Jack was doing wrong.

He didn't make the call. Instead he checked Frankie's room. The machete was missing, but all the wheels were still turning. He put an ear to the primary receiver and heard Richard Nixon's voice, swearing at his secretary.

 

*

He did not run to the front door when the handle rattled. Instead he waited in the hallway, listening to the sounds between the raindrops on the terrace - picks tapping against pins, the scraping of a deadbolt being pressured from the wrong direction.

_"You need to learn to do that more quietly,"_ he would have said, but one look in Frank's eyes and the words were gone from his lips.

Raindrops ran through Frank's hair, down his long coat, over his steel-capped boots. His black woolen scarf was a sodden pile about his neck. Jack could see the shape of the machete he wore at his belt, and it could have been Null again - Null but with cold lips frozen in no expression, Null but with blood and life in his eyes. Null in a brown trenchcoat, Null with infinitely more awareness of what he was.

"I - I went out this morning, to - to see Ocelot's operatives - and - I was lost," he said. Lost? _Lost like Eva? Or lost like me?_

It didn't matter. It didn't fucking matter. Jack led Frank inside with a firm hand to the elbow, kicked the door shut and just _looked_ at him. Put his arm around him. Held him against his shoulder, didn't think about the marks of the trail Frank left - the stories in the dirt in the treads of his shoes, the blood-scent amid the rain - If Frank wanted him to know, he would tell him. If not, he just wanted Frank to know it was alright. Even if it wasn't. It didn't matter.

He waited til he thought Frank was crying. Then he waited until he thought Frank had stopped crying. Then he waited a little more. Eventually he pushed the boy back with a tap to the arm, and said, "You go get some dry clothes on. I'll make some more coffee."

He went to the lounge, with a look over his shoulder - Frank was hanging his outdoor clothes on a hook by the door. The trenchcoat had been a gift from Adamska (_"You'll need them if you're living on the fucking East Coast"_), one each for the two of them, and a third for Adamska himself. They _matched_. There was something unsettling about that. Jack wore his when he had occasion to do so, which wasn't often.

He boiled water for the coffee press, and lit a cigar.

When Frank came to join him, he was lying flat on his back on the floor, watching smoke rings rise to the ceiling. Frank sat down on the pile of cushions beside him - he was wearing pyjamas, and had a mug held in one hand. It was Frank's mug. From the kitchenette in the back. Still clean and empty, because he'd not been there for breakfast. Jack sat halfway up and lit a second cigar - Frank accepted it, blinking puffy eyes in surprise; on advice from Dr Clark, Jack rarely let the young man smoke. But Dr Clark wasn't here.

Frank poured the coffee in silence, then said, "I'm sorry about today -"

"One day doesn't matter. It's a long mission and -" he was too worn out to fake a smile, "- it's driving me nuts too."

Frank nodded. "I can tell, sometimes. Like when you hang up on Ocelot." Jack coughed, and lay back down. "This isn't the right mission for us, is it?"

"It's not the right mission for me. But I thought you were enjoying it..."

"No." Frank sipped his drink. "But I want to be able to say that I did it. And that's why I'm going to see it through." He grinned. "I want them to spend the rest of the century wondering how. Who 'Deep Throat' really is."

Jack smiled too, finally starting to see the funny side of that nickname. "So what is the right mission for you?" He thought of the plans he'd laid that morning, but of all the abilities he'd been teaching Frank, stealth was still his weakest.

For a full minute, he received no reply. He watched Frank draw on his cigar, attempt a smoke-ring - another skill that required further training - and could almost see words assembling in his head.

"I want to go back to the battlefield. To Africa. If I go back to what I was before they made me sleep -" He paused, drank more coffee. "Maybe if I follow all the memories I have, I'll find some more. Maybe I can piece it all back together. I want to fill in the blank spots..."

Jack's heart trembled. Everything here - Sigint's ingenious distractions, the web of wires that they'd spun over the city, their unvarying daily routine, the endless afternoons in which he'd tried to help Frank unravel the past - was disintegrating under the weight of a few more words. He'd been a fucking fool, mistaking the means for the end. He wasn't here to spend time with Frank, or to sooth his own conscience with affection. He was here to help Frank be the soldier, the _man_, he'd been born to be.

He couldn't ignore Frank's will, or his need to move on, move deeper. Frank wasn't his pawn. He didn't want FOXHOUND to work like that - he wanted his soldiers to fight for what _they_ believed in. "If that's what you want, then when this is all over I'm going to find us a battlefield. Either it'll bring us both back to life, or it'll kill us, and..."

Frank smiled, like a boy who had never had anything to lose.

 

*

_"Snake."_

"Ocelot. This is Gray Fox speaking."

"Fox? It's good to hear from you. Is Snake perhaps indisposed?"

"He's preparing to join his men in Europe. I will be overseeing the operation until the end of March."

"Excellent. I shall provide you with whatever further contacts that you need."

"Is the puppet ready?"

"Yes. Sigint has a contact who will make it clear to the administration that Number Three is their only option."

"In that case, Two's days are...numbered."

"As are One's."

"Yes. His number is barely larger."

Laughter. "I am very glad you're working for us, Fox. You are our strong right hand."

"So says Snake. It is a loyalty that will never be severed."

"Indeed - and Snake learned of loyalty from a great patriot." Pause. "What can we expect to happen in the coming days?"

"I've...persuaded...one of your burglars to claim that Number One was directing his activities. We're preparing all the evidence the prosecutors will need."

"I commend you. Good night, Fox."

"Good night."

 

**EXIT**


End file.
